The CricketWeb Newbie Guide to Battrick

As I've just gotten a new team I'm ploughing through the old Battrick thread for advice on management and such. I thought I might create a thread purely for advice on Battrick.

To keep this thread streamlined as possible, could there be no discussion at all - unless there is something you feel needs to be changed in a guide someone has posted.
If you do find something, please quote it, and suggest what needs to be changed. Then could the original poster or moderator fix the post appropriately and delete the suggested comment post.

Err, I hope that made some sense.

Anyway, First things first, Adamc's starting guide:

Originally Posted by Adamc

I had no idea what to do when I started, and stuffed up quite a bit, but here's what I would do if I was starting now:

1) Read the rules, they tell you most of the important stuff.

2) Hire ten coaches - I'm using 4 batting sessions, 4 bowling, 1 fitness and 1 wicketkeeping session at the moment. Batting/bowling/WK obviously develop batting/bowling/WK skills, and fitness coaching develops stamina. There is the option of using a fielding coach as well, which develops fielding and also makes the secondary skills (consistency and concentration) develop faster. If your club is stronger in batting though you might want to concentrate on bowling, or vice-versa.
You should give most of your coaching sessions to young players (20 and under) as they develop the fastest. You can give players multiple coaching sessions, but each subsequent session (of the same skill) is worth a little less. E.g. a player on two batting sessions won't receive the benefit of two full sessions, but it'll be more like 1.6 sessions or something like that.
Stamina training should probably go to a player who is likely to be involved in the game a lot, such as an allrounder or a WK/batsman.
Coaches are pretty expensive (2,500 per week each) but you should be able to afford it as long as your gate receipts are OK.
You can only have ten coaching sessions at a time, so there's no point in hiring more than ten.

3) Other staff:
Sports psychologists - they help develop the secondary skills of all the players being trained, so they're fairly important. You should probably start off with 3 or 4 then hire more once you start to generate income.

PR officers - improve sponsors confidence (and sponsors income) and give you good publicity, which I guess gives you more members signing up. I had three PRs throughout last season and my sponsors' confidence was at the maximum, so I don't think you really need any more than three unless you start losing members.

Financial advisors - if you've got money in the bank, they generate interest ($$$). Each additional advisor generates a little less interest; there is a table somewhere which tells you exactly how much. I think the first advisor generates 0.95%, the second one 0.87%, and it keeps decreasing after that. If you've got 200,000 in the bank, that means the first advisor will give you 1,900 (per week), and the second one 1,740. They cost 1,500 per week so you shouldn't hire more than two (until you get more money) otherwise you won't profit from them.

3) Youth academy - probably a good idea to set youth investment to 8,000 or 12,000. You get one youth player per week, really just comes down to luck whether they're any good or not, but obviously you've got a greater chance of getting a good player if your youth investment is high. I've only had one good youth player so far.

4) Work out who your best players are - this will give you some idea of how to structure your first XI. Primary skills (bat/bowl/WK) are most important, but secondary skills are significant too (consistency is more important for bowlers; concentration for batsmen). Stamina is also important, but mainly for FC games (which aren't being played yet). You'll probably find a few dud players who you'll never use. You should try to sell them, and if that fails, fire them; there's no point paying their salary if you don't need them.

5) Pitch - work out the strengths of your bowling attack and set your pitch accordingly. If your batting is weak, you should consider using a batsman-friendly pitch. I've got an all-seam bowling lineup and a fairly strong batting lineup so I'm using a green pitch atm.

6) Buying players - if you're really desperate for some decent players, check the transfer market. Young players tend to cost a lot more as they can be trained more easily. If you just need some decent batsmen/bowlers to give you something to work with, you can often find older players of competent skill for under 20 grand. Mediocre is probably the minimum level you'd want for specialist batsmen/bowlers, though for young players, a lesser skill level is acceptable as you can train them.

7) Playing XI - basically just apply the same principles of real-life cricket to choose your XI. Allrounders and WK/batsmen are very useful, so use them if you have them. The only difference really is that you can only bowl five bowlers, so you should probably pick five good bowlers instead of three good bowlers and a bunch of part-timers.
Opposition players usually bowl their best bowlers first, so it might be useful to sacrifice one of your not-so-good batsmen in the opening position. There's no harm in opening with good batsmen though; my 1st opener (superb batting skill) averages 130, and my other opener (respectable batting skill) averages 51. Obviously there's no point wasting good batsmen down the order where they might not bat though.

8) Match orders - I can't really give much advice, as I'm not really sure how effective the match orders are. I'd suggest though that since these are OD matches, you should favour aggressive batting orders to defensive ones. My top 8 batsmen are all competent or better, and I set them all to attacking or very attacking, and they seem to do pretty well. Average score is around 280-300, and I've only been bowled out twice in 23 games I think.

9) The ground - there is the option of expanding the ground capacity, but IMO you shouldn't do it until you've played at least a few matches. If you aren't winning matches, attendances won't be high anyway, so you should only expand once you start to get high attendances. It's quite expensive, too.

OK, that was a bit longer than I intended.

That's pretty much all I can tell you without knowing the specific details of your team. That's just my thoughts though; basically you should follow your own instincts. I take no responsibility if any of this advice backfires, btw.

I will also try and keep a "quick links" list in this initial post for quick reference.

Dunno what the maximum age is, they can probably play well into their 30s but their skills start to decline once they reach a certain age (at the moment this age is unknown). I'm just talking about 'old' in terms of training - once players start to get beyond 20 or 21 training takes too long to bother with very much. Having said that, I trained a 23yo bowler last season and his skills improved a little. I'd suggest you don't train players over 20/21 unless their skills are already very high.

Because they can't really be trained, older players go much cheaper on the transfer market. In the long term their skills won't develop, but in the short term they will be better than a lot of the players new teams start out with, so it's worthwhile to get a few players like that if you are in your first season.

Originally Posted by Adamc

If you place a bid within two minutes of the deadline, it gets extended by another two minutes I think. There's nothing wrong with placing bids just before the deadline, better than placing a bid an hour or two before then finding out later that you've been outbidded.

It surely still helps though, especially for players who are total n00bs to battrick.

I am a brave man, I am a coward.I am the tiger, I am the flower.I am honest, and I'm a liar.I am vital, I am tired.I am a free man, I am caught.From where I am, I see the top.I am most importantly never concerned with what I am not.Forever, more than just surviving.THIS IS MY LIFE AND THIS LIFE IS MY DIAMOND

Yea, concentration/consistency take about 16 weeks on a batting/bowling net on a 17yo and that figure hardly diminishes, my 23yr old still hasn't popped after 11 weeks on a batting net. Fielding or w/keeping in conjunction with batting/bowling will still halve the times.